The story focuses on an unnamed ghostwriter (a person who is hired to write literary works that are officially credited to another person), who is writing the memoir of a man named Victor Devoto. Victor is the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed his wife and children. Writing Victor’s story reminds the ghostwriter of her own trauma, and over several evenings as she writes, the ghostwriter’s brother, who died twenty-five years earlier, visits her home as a ghost. On his third visit, the ghostwriter confesses how guilty she feels that he died and she lived. The story flashes back to their escape from Vietnam by boat, when the ghostwriter’s brother had tried to disguise her as a boy so that she wouldn’t be kidnapped by pirates. But one of the pirates had seen through their ruse, and when the ghostwriter’s brother tried to stab the pirate to protect the ghostwriter, the pirate had struck her brother with his gun and killed him. The pirate and other men had then raped the ghostwriter.